At this year's HANNOVER MESSE some of our exhibitors and members of the Open Source Business Alliance (OSBA) constituted a new working group „Industrie 4.0“. It addresses the needs of smaller and medium-sized enterprises for a timely implementation of industrial digitalization.

This working group is supposed to create a link between industry and for a digitalization relevant Open Source-solution providers.

The main emphasis lies on open interface functions which are the mandatory basis for digitalization of industrial operating processes. Through experience exchange and provision of best-practice-scenarios the OSBA-working group „Industrie 4.0“ helps to solve typical problems when entering a process of industrial digitalization.

In a first step the working group will gather successful scenarios (use cases and referential projects using open interfaces and software) and make them available to industrial enterprises. At the same time a catalogue of solutions will be compiled, serving as a guideline to businesses for an effective planning and realization of an industrial digitalization.

„Industrie 4.0 and industrial digitalization are the basis for a thriving and competitive industry. Whereas huge corporations have the technical resources to implement such a quantum leap, smaller and medium-sized companies face the problem of dealing with a lot of imponderabilities. OSB Alliance shows these companies clear paths to reach their goals with the support of open standards and open software very quickly and efficiently“, explains Rico Barth, speaker of the working group "Industrie 4.0".

The challenge lies in inter-operability of hitherto solitary-run systems, tools and machines. To technically integrate all IT-components, consistent interfaces, standards and software are necessary as linkage. Open Source-software offers openness, individual adaptability as well as all interfaces and standards to enable communication between systems of varying suppliers. Discrepancies in code and actual programs are practically excluded.

With implementing Industrie 4.0, the topic of security obviously plays an important roll. Cyber-criminal attacks have already shown that an interconnected industry possesses points of attack. Here as well Open Source-software offers the best possible solution. It is much simpler with Open Source-software to detect and fix security problems or remotely controlled misconduct of software before an attack and imminent damage occurs.